Talk:Conscious evolution
Tom (and all)- I think a clarification is needed for this page. On one hand, there is a tendency (especially among New Agers, Pagans, and non-biologists) to imagine evolution as intentional in two ways. First, that animals have evolved because, for instance, Giraffes wanted to grow longer necks, and this was passed on to offspring. This is closest to a Lamarckian view (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarck), which is incorrect. Second, many imagine evolution to mean "an individual striving toward enlightenment and empowerment so their mind grows and transcends the universe". Both of these miss the point of biological evolution, in that it is populations that evolve, not individuals, and that this is by selection, not by Larmarckian evolution. There is the societal, cultural and memetic evolution as described in non-zero that we are all familiar with, and that could be described as "conscious evolution", in that some members (like us) may actually try to speed it along. There is also the real improvement of an individual's mind - but I don't think we should call that evolution (maybe just "growth"), since it is confusing. The concern I'm raising is that by failing to be clear about the real kinds of evolution, we may encourage the use the term evolution in the two ways mentioned in the first paragraph. Seeing how common that already is, I really want to make sure we don't do that. I don't want to do either of those errors because they cause us to be quickly disregarded as cutesy, silly people who don't know what they are talking about. We instantly lose credibility amoung many educated people, and become indistinguishable from the hordes of fluffy-bunny white light pagans and new agers. Not that they are bad people, but that we aren't them, and someone looking for that kind of spirituality is already satisfied. -Equinox I have similar concerns. The text as a whole can benefit from being tightened up and structured more clearly. Also, it may be good to tighten up the content in terms of accuracy and alignment with science. I am also wondering about the inclusion of "enlightenment" which is a nebulous term. It may be good clarify and add some references. (It may be best to leave it out here altogether, but if it is included it would be good to tie it to an existing model, for instance the F1-nondual model by Ken Wilber. The nondual level is what is usually referred to as "enlightenment" but that does per definition not evolve. The other levels - F1 through F8 - do.) I am also wondering about the paragraph of general discussion of "being conscious". It may be slightly on the side of the topic. The following discussion of evolution becoming conscious of itself seems enough. What comes to mind for me is that conscious evolution has (at least) two aspects. One is the general one of evolution becoming conscious of itself through us. The other is the consequences of this shift. What does it mean? What changes? What are the dangers and opportunities? How can we deepen our realization of being evolution becoming conscious of itself? Wish I could offer something more constructive, but this topic is not clear enough for me yet. Brave and good start, Tom! It is helpful for me personally to reflect on this, and I am sure the same goes for many others in the ES community. Per ---- Per and Jon, Thanks for raising these important concerns. See Connie's edits to the evolutionary perspective page, and see if this helps. MBDowd 23:32, 26 February 2006 (UTC) Evolutionary Leap in this Page ? Hey, guys! I'm curious what you think of it now. Let me know. -- Tom Excellent, Tom! I love what you've done with the place! MBDowd 13:47, 28 February 2006 (UTC) ---- Hi Tom- ::Great changes! I also changed it a bit - if the previous version is preferred, let me know, I copied and saved it. All the best --Equinox Deepening the Discussion (the following was sent to Equinox (Jon Host) in email as well as posted here) I am fascinated by the changes you made, Jon. From them I am assuming (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you believe the following... # Conscious evolution is simply any intentional change in culture, social systems, and technologies. # Biological evolution cannot be intentional, and does not qualify as an aspect of conscious evolution. # Conscious evolution cannot be local, only global. # Conscious evolution is not an evolutionary leap to anything particularly new, nor is it an expression of any developmental trend or directionality in evolution. # Conscious evolution does not include the evolution of consciousness, nor is the current form of human consciousness a causative factor in the crises we face. # Our motivations involve "improving the situation" re the crises we face. # We do not face the prospect of human extinction, the end of civilization, or the death of the planet. These are not assumptions I share, but that is secondary. In consciously evolving our collective "ideology" here in our wiki, it makes sense to work our way either towards a consensus about how we define such basic things as "conscious evolution", or work our way towards clarity about what the real differences are and how to present them so they authentically represent the diversity of our movement. I'm trying to do the first steps of that here. I look forward to what we discover as we talk. Coheartedly, Tomatlee 06:10, 1 March 2006 (UTC) ---- Hi Tom- Thanks for helping this process along in a way that is both effective and (hopefully mutually) pleasant. How about if we start by discussing the numbered beliefs you discerned, and then move on to further discussion. Do I agree with the following assumptions from Tom's list?::: 1. Conscious evolution is simply any intentional change in culture, social systems, and technologies. Hmmm. I don’t think I agree with that. If several conscious cultural changes were made, and only one was selected for, then changed by contingency, I think I’d still call that “conscious evolution”, though it goes beyond what you wrote in #1. : Interesting, Jon. My statement of "your" assumption was intended to highlight (a) your focus on intentionality as the defining characteristic of '''conscious' evolution (since you cut "awareness, reflection, and some measure of wisdom" from my definition), and (b) your exclusion of consciousness from the list of realms within which changes could be considered significant aspects of "conscious evolution" (i.e., you kept culture, social systems, and technologies, but dropped consciousness). You interpreted my statement in another interesting direction, but didn't pick up on (a) and (b). I'm still curious if you feel strongly about those.'' Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) ::Hey, maybe some of my edits were seen too idealogically. Many of them were just to shorten the length of the text! Though I do see "conscious evolution" as similar to "intentional evolution". An evolutionary change in what consciousness is, is possible, but I'd rather avoid it since we: 1. don't have any evidence for that, since we don't even know what regular consciousness is, and 2. it sounds too much like fluffy, unsupported (and therefore a little dishonest) promises.Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) 2. Biological evolution cannot be intentional, and does not qualify as an aspect of conscious evolution. I agree with this for non-primate life. However, conscious changes we make to further evolution can indeed include biological ones. For a somewhat trivial example, say a scientist intentionally causes a mutation in a human germ line cell resulting in a lower risk of Alzheimers. Further say that the possession of that gene is sexually selected for, and soon becomes very common in the population. That would be biological evolution that is consciously done, both in its "mutation" and selection stages. : This is what I intended to communicate. We are learning to control genetic structure. In the not too distant future, parents will be able to increasingly chose the genetic makeup of their children, even in such ways that those children will be able to naturally pass on their genes to their children. Scientists are already beginning to craft organisms with radically altered or new genes from scratch. There is real fear of genetically engineered bio-warfare or bio-terrorist microbes, or genetically modified soldiers, etc. It seems to me not unrealistic to foresee genetic engineering and social choice (including advertising, fads, scientific inquiry, battle successes, etc.) augmenting (if not replacing) genetic mutation and natural selection as primary drivers of biological evolution. Do you agree with '''this' framing?'' Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) ::Sounds like we agree on this one. I mostly agree with your "(if not replacing)" statement too. Augmenting for sure, and replacing mutation will happen very soon, since mutation is so small. However, recognize that social choice is very similar to regular old sexual selection, so "replacing" that is kinda redundant.Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) On the other hand, while a friend of mine and I were observing some butterflies, he commented that the butterflies spots (which look like an owl’s eyes, and as such scare off birds that may eat the butterfly), were clear evidence to him that butterflies consciously change their evolution. He thought that the butterflies had seen owls, thought “hey, I bet owl eyes would scare off those crows that might eat me”, and willed into existence the eyespots. Further, that then other butterflies had done the same, and now they all had the spots. This is what I think many of the fluffy types I refer to think of when they hear “conscious biological evolution”. It is something that I think has no place in our pages and must be guarded against because it makes us look silly and not a realistic approach to spirituality. : I totally agree with you on this (with the above caveat that butterflies genetically engineered for intelligence, choice, and tool-using skills, may someday be able to manipulate their butterfly genes for spots!!). This disproven dynamic should be mentioned on this site as an example of dynamics that are NOT at work in the past history of evolution. However, as John Stewart points out, there is more than pure random mutation involved in mutation. Genetic dynamics include internal mutation factors which, themselves, evolve to generate more useful mutations. This is an emerging area '''between' pure randomness and changing genes by direct will or whim.'' Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) ::Good. We can even use this example if we like (though let's change the animal in case my friend reads it and is offended - how about "beetle backs"). I'd like to avoid the non-random mutation. Current research shows this to be extremely minor if there at all, it's not worth the decrease in respectability, and it's quite a minor point.Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) 3. Conscious evolution cannot be local, only global. I don’t think that. Consciously coming up with and implementing new ideas locally can indeed lead to their selection and global impact. However, I do think that if a change is eternally limited to one small spot, I wouldn’t call it evolution – I’d instead call it irrelevant. I mean, sure it’s evolution, but without the selection half of evolution, it seems lame to me. : I would suggest to you that most biological evolution through the eons has been local. The global impact has primarily been an accumulation of millions of local changes, with isolation often being a determining factor in differentiation of species. This is not "irrelevance" at work! I would further suggest that the same is true of cultural and memetic evolution, although as long as global interconnectedness remains (and there are many scenarios through which it might collapse), the chances of global diffusion and selection of new human-relevent developments of all kinds are extremely good. But once we break out of the genetic-transfer dynamic (individuals surviving long enough and with sufficient influence to pass on their genes) and move into memes, consciousness, tools, etc., the nature of innovation diffusion changes radically and so, therefore, does our sense of what constitutes evolution. Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) ::We are kinda saying the same thing. Speciation certainly does happen first to local populations - geographic isolation is probably, as you point out, the biggest single driver for speciation. However, in all of those cases, the group spreads out of there, and becomes significant. Thus we both agree on the process, but given that common story, you'd call the whole process "local evolution" and I would not, because the species doesn't stay small and local. If it did, I wouldn't consider it very relevant. Seems like this is another area where common ground will be easy to find. Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) 4. Conscious evolution is not an evolutionary leap to anything particularly new, nor is it an expression of any developmental trend or directionality in evolution. “Evolutionary leap” sounds like a contradiction. “Evolution” is gradual change, while “leap” sounds more like it implies “giant leap” or “important leap” or “revolutionary change” or the much hyped “quantum leap”. : Again, I feel like patterns of past biological evolution are colonizing, rather than informing, your ability to think about current or future evolutionary dynamics. Evolution in the past was slow because of the dynamics of genetic transfer. Once we shifted into human toolmaking, language, civilization, information diffusion technologies, etc., the whole evolutionary game changed -- especially as human activities began to impinge on the "natural" world. The development of the wheel, money, the printing press, the automobile, computers, biotechnology, and nanotechnology all qualify, in my book, as evolutionary leaps, not just of human culture, but in the meta Great Story of evolution. Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) ::OK. Sounds like we agree. I don't see all past biological evolution as slow. Punctuated equilibrium shows how evolution can go from a snails pace to lightning fast if conditions change. I just saw a study on rapid evolution in invasive frogs in Australia where significant evolution has been observed in the past 70 years. I also agree that with memetic evolution it can be orders of magnitude faster, like, days. Calling rapid evolution an "evolutionary leap" should be fine - it sounds like we agree it means "a leap in the evolutionary process", not "a super cool leap".Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) I do think that conscious evolution is the expression of the universe’s development, and that this is part of the likely directionality/progress of evolution. : Great. On this one, we are on exactly the same page. Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) :) 5. Conscious evolution does not include the evolution of consciousness, nor is the current form of human consciousness a causative factor in the crises we face. I don’t think we should imply that we have any expectation or control of some new kind of consciousness. Heck, we can hardly describe what our current consciousness is. I don’t want to use the term “consciousness” as a fancier way to say “thinking”. I do think we can develop more environmentally sound ways of thinking, like thinking of the earth as a whole organism. I think that realizations like we are made of stardust and our glass of water is millions of years old are better described as “ways of thinking” or “worldviews”, rather than “a new and better consciousness”. The reason I hesitate to use “consciousness” for all that is because it sounds a little like some dreamy Nirvana sales pitch and perhaps not as much like practical ways to live our lives in the here and now. : I suggest that one of the main groups who are speaking of "conscious evolution" are those involved in consciousness studies or consciousness-related spiritual practices (e.g., Andrew Cohen's movement behind ''What is Enlightenment? magazine and Ken Wilber's Integral Institute. One of the most remarkable features of this Great Story movement is the extent to which it makes room for the co-existence of, interaction between, co-evolution of, and occasional (and perhaps ultimate) integration of those who are grounded primarily in the sciences, those who are grounded primarily in spirituality (especially Eastern-based consciousness development practices), and those who are grounded primarily in social change efforts. I feel VERY strongly that this site must be a welcoming environment for all those viewpoints and take strong action to make sure none of them make the others feel unwelcome, and to avoid unproductive battles between them. Talking about "some dreamy Nirvana sales pitch" may be met with accusations of "the kind of arrogant scientific reductionism that got us into this mess in the first place", etc., spiraling into mutual closed-mindedness and closed-heartedness that will impede our ability to embrace valuable diversity and move to higher ground together.'' : Furthermore, I suggest that the term "consciousness" can be taken to embrace all the dynamics of our interior existence, including not only thinking, but feeling, perception, values, intuition, intention, memory, impulse, response, will, insight, and more -- and all the many facets of, dynamics of, and interactions among these factors. There is a whole universe "in there" and there are many millions of people who have done careful and even rigorous work in understanding what goes on in that universe, and its relationship to the allegedly objective world and "everyday lives" that most of us believe we share (although much research from cognitive sciences to quantum physics make this not as clear as it once seemed). : Finally, from my social change perspective, consciousness embraces more than ways of thinking. I want to help people see differently, respond differently, desire differently. If you wish to pack all those into the category "thinking", you may do that, for yourself. But many of us find "consciousness" a much richer container for that kind of variety, one that helps us move out of linear, verbal, practical realms into the realms of passion, vision, transformation, commitment, and an epiphanously sacred, mythic, intimate relationship with the world, quite beyond thinking (although it naturally shapes thinking, as well). The ongoing conscious evolution of consciousness, itself, is, to me, a vital ingredient of the evolutionary vision of a better world. Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) ::I agree with you on many points. However, altered and different states of consciousness are not a new thing, and are present in nearly all religious and ethnic traditions, old and new. We can't know that we aren't just doing the same thing - and doing the same thing isn't evolution. In an area like this where it is so hard to know anything (for instance, I don't even know if you see the same color I do when we both call it "red"), it seems very shaky to talk about changes and evolutions. This may be our biggest point of divergence, though I agree with you that we want to be welcoming to those you mention. Maybe if we resolve all the other points we can come back to this one. Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) Insight – 4 & 5 both deal with our use of terms. Do we use the more grandiose terms, or not, and why? I do think Great Story evolution is both sacred and worthy of glory. However, I don’t want to use hype or sales pitches. Being a scientist working on nanotechnology, I see hype words appear and crash often, and I don’t want to see us fall victim to the hype cycle. I don’t want to see a world in 10 years where “evolution”, “consciousness”, etc have the same pathetic connotations that “primal scream therapy” and “penis envy” do today. : I hear that you don't want to see the term "evolution" degraded in the culture, nor the term "consciousness" to colonize and degrade our scientific evolutionary understandings. I share that wish. At the same time, I recognize that the use of language and the great river of human understandings and passions are not under our control. We are participants, not masters of, cultural evolution. We can take action designed to minimize degradation, and discussions about how to do that are invaluable to us. But if the past is any guide, the chances are good that out of our work will come a whole spectrum of social phenomenon, some reflecting our fondest dreams, and others which seem to us trivial or undesirable. Look at virtually all other major spiritual movements -- and even scientific movements -- and we find that. The alternative is to stay very small so we can control what happens. Inspired by evolution, I'm for risking wild diversity among us... and accepting that we will have some hype and fads as part of the fallout... Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) :: We do have some influence, otherwise we wouldn't be doing this page. I'd like to help that influence be for the good, non-hype. But, I agree with you that it isn't under our control, nor should it be. More importantly - I also agree that glorious, uplifted, strong, terms are appropriate for our use - the Great Story is a glorious, uplifted, strong idea! So maybe we are pretty close to agreement here too. Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) 6. Our motivations involve "improving the situation" re the crises we face. No, I don’t think that. I think we are players in the grand cosmic great story, and improving our corner is just a first step, and only part of the huge picture (both in space and time). However, I am sensitive to the problems of directing the reader’s vision beyond the immediate to the all encompassing, without falling prey to the hype problem mentioned in the insight above. : Again, there are interesting dynamic tensions here. I find the hugeness, the mythos of evolutionary engagement inspiring and empowering, drawing me into action and challenge. If what we are about is only gathering in our homes and doing rituals based on bio-cosmic evolutionary past, I would go elsewhere. In these times of tremendous challenges to our collective well-being, in the face of gigantic forces of degradation, I feel it is vital to have a very real sense that "we are players in the grand cosmic great story" and that what we do can truly make an evolutionary difference. For some, that will seem "hype." For them, the speeches of Martin Luther King, the writings of Gandhi, the documents of the founding of the United States could perhaps be considered "hype" (e.g., "All men are created equal?!! Give me a break!! Look around you!!"). I'd rather have ample inspiration than restrict it out of fear of accusations of hype. It will be interesting to see what others feel about this issue. Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) ::You sold me! (see previous comment)Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) 7. We do not face the prospect of human extinction, the end of civilization, or the death of the planet Sort of. I see human extinction in the next million years as unlikely. Humans are smart and hardy. A global disaster could kill 99.999% of humans and still leave millions of the hardy survivors to continue, perhaps living as we did in the Pleistocene. The end of civilization I do see as possible, though I’d expect it to arise again within a few thousand years (ref. Nonzero), and of course that process would not be fun. Depending on what you mean by death of the planet, I see that as very unlikely. Bacteria thrive in the radioactive hulk of the Chernobyl reactor #4, in volcanic heat that never goes below a scorching 250 degrees F, in acids stronger than stomach acid, in bases strong than soap, and in toxins ranging from crude oil to pesticides. Even something as absolutely monumental as the KT asteroid failed to kill off so much as the mammals. (The KT asteroid caused most of the earth’s land surface to burn, boiled many inland lakes, baked the earth for weeks, then plunged the earth into years of nuclear-type darkness and winter, with snow in the tropics). Even an all out nuclear war is hardly anything compared to that. What are you envisioning that will kill the planet? My concern with statements about human or planetary extinction are, again, that we could be dismissed as hype. : I think we are on different places in the spectrum of concern. Although I agree that in most (but not all) scenarios bacteria would survive, I have become concerned about human extinction and planetary demise through references like Bill Joy's famous April 2000 article in Wired magazine or UK Royal Astronomer Martin Rees' book Our Final Hour (which discusses, among other potential disasters, the possibility of physical destruction of the planet through supercollider experiments -- of which there is a miniscule but non-zero chance). Again, the question is not so much who is right -- we can't be sure, in spite of our various evidences and authorities -- but how to make space in this wiki for a range of views. My tendency would be to use the shared statement (the main wiki page on this) to explain the range of concerns that exist among followers of evolutionary spirituality and note the role that "conscious evolution" plays in the metanarratives of each camp. And then leave the prognostications about "what will happen" and "what our chances are" to the personal statements that are linked at the bottom of the page. What do you think of that approach? Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) ::Sounds good. A reference you gave suggested a future world where a small elite of humans kills most humans and keeps the world to themselves. That's not the extinction of humans or anything else - that's common genocide, which we've had for millions of years. We can paint plenty of very scary scenarios on things we agree on as reasonable threats, without the death of the planet or other things that we agree are unlikely. Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) Thanks again for opening this up for discussion. I’m interested to hear what you think. :: Thanks to you too! This is useful and fun. Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) On the topic of separate pages for individual views – maybe that’ll work. However, I think a big threat is boomeritis. We should not encourage and incorporate all ideas – that leads to the fluffy, thin gruel of “everything is true”, which ends up failing to say anything. I’ve seen so many fluffy people assert that “all ideas are equally true” to recognize the poisonous nature of that kind of relativism to a movement like ours. All ideas are not equally true. All ideas are not and should not be part of evolutionary spirituality. Though Ken Wilbur does make some mistakes, he has done a good job of calling a spade a spade when it comes to boomeritis. I think we need to recognize that in our creation of this wiki. : I don't understand how allowing people to make clearly marked personal statements on their own separate wiki pages, clearly distinguished from the main wiki text on a subject, constitutes saying that "all ideas are equally true." Furthermore, I don't know how, on a wiki, we are going to police and weed out false ideas. Who is authorized to judge that, and why them? Beyond that: One of the great omissions from Wilber's theories is the transformational role of '''dialogue' and the role of different views in making dialogic transformation possible and powerful. Evolution is majorly about interaction among diverse entities, and social evolution often has a dialectic quality, with novelty arising from the interchange of diverse ideas, interests, or institutions. So I suggest that, rather than decide ahead of time that we don't want inferior ideas here, that we design our wiki culture and process in such a way that ideas and people have a chance to interact with each other and move towards greater truth together. I find that much more juicy -- and easier to manage -- than deciding who is right and who is wrong.'' Tomatlee 00:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC) ::I'm not sure what the best policing method is. I too dislike the idea of heavy-handed censorship. There are two things we need to balance. On one hand, we could have problems with ideas like butterfly wings and "you are going to hell for this page" popping up all over. On the other hand, we could have problems where we have to water down our common page so much to get agreement that is doesn't say anything real. I'm not sure which is the greater threat, but am concerned about both. I think the idea of separate pages is a good start - though I don't want to see that overused as a place to put any idea that anyone disagrees with. Let's see how it works, and go from there.Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) Coheartedly- Equinox 22:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) 151.163.2.8 22:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC) Together in the Great Work- Equinox 15:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC) I've seen the revamping of the page - wow, it's great! Out of all that discussion, a powerful and cosupported page emerges! Thanks for all your help, Tom. Coemergently- Equinox 13:15, 8 March 2006 (UTC)